The Georgetown Metropolitan

1500 block of 35th St.

Photo by Beyond DC.

The Georgetown Dean and Deluca is closing August 1st. This should come as no surprise to anyone following the chain’s recent troubles. It has recently closed locations across the country. And the Georgetown location has been in a depressing state for a while now, with half empty shelves and out of season items filling the abundant gaps. This will be a loss for the neighborhood.

GM would write a retrospective, but frankly he didn’t shop there that much, and the Washington Post’s Maura Judkis already wrote a fabulous one:

I remember walking through the Georgetown market, in its historic brick building, and looking at all the cheeses and smoked fish and exciting ingredients — not that I even knew what to do with half of them, at the time. I remember marveling: This is where fancy people buy their groceries. I think I bought one of the prepared salads, displayed behind glass in ceramic bowls. For less than $20, Dean & DeLuca made me feel like I could be a fancy person, too.

What GM can do is give you a little context about the building’s possible future.

The market building itself was built in 1865. There had been a market building at that location dating to as early as 1795. Throughout this period, the property was owned by the city of Georgetown. In fact, it’s still publicly owned. When Georgetown was subsumed into the District of Columbia in 1871, the ownership of the market passed to the District. And to this day the property is owned by DC. Continue reading →

Photo by Bill Starrels.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown real estate: still pricey.
• Dean and Deluca to close August 1st. (more on this later)

Potomac River

Photo by Brett Young.

There is a meeting tonight being held by DDOT on the future of the Foundry Branch trolley trestle, just west of Georgetown University. The meeting is at St. John’s church on O St. at 6:30 pm.

The Foundry Branch trolley trestle is the spindly bridge you can see from Canal Rd. near the split with Foxhall:

It once carried streetcars from Georgetown out to Glen Echo. The 20 line, to be precise, used to travel all the way from Cabin John through Georgetown down to Union Station. The right-of-way that the street car used is still owned by the District. It winds its way from the western edge of the trestle bridge, through the Palisades and into Maryland. At some points it feels like a trail already; at other spots, residents have expanded their backyards to gobble up the public right-of-way.

(The trestle bridge itself is actually owned by WMATA. This ownership is the result of a complicated history, and WMATA wants nothing to do with it but to tear it down.)

The city is current studying whether it would make sense to restore that right-of-way into a proper pedestrian path. The great thing about these rail-to-trails conversions is that railroads (or trollies) need flat land. So the trails end up fairly level and perfect for non-motorized travel.

Part of the general idea that DDOT is studying would be to carry the trail across the trestle bridge and onto Prospect St. in Georgetown. This would be a boon to walkers and cyclists looking for a level way to get from the Palisades to the heart of Georgetown. As it is now, you need to either travel all the way up to Reservoir Rd., or down through some fairly awful sidewalks to M St. Continue reading →

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The heat is breaking just in time for another movie in the park tonight.
• Farmers markets in Georgetown, and beyond.

3200 block of P St.

Let’s first get this out of the way: The reason there is no Metro stop in Georgetown is two-fold: technical difficulties from the hardness of the bedrock and the proximity of the river meant a station would be infeasible; and at the time the Metro planners were laying out the system, Georgetown was not enough of a population or job center to justify working out a solution to the feasibility problem.

This explanation is the one settled upon by Zachary Schrag, the unofficial historian of Metro. As you will see below, this is a conclusion shared by those who were actually involved with the planning. You will note that it does not include any reference to Georgetown residents thwarting the station in order to keep out minorities. Yet, this is an incredibly common belief, enough so to qualify as one of the great urban legends of the District. (Alongside such chestnuts as the reason there’s no J St. is that Pierre L’Enfant hated John Jay.)

An obvious explanation for where this urban legend came from and why it persists is that it so conforms with what many people think of Georgetown residents. “Of course Georgetowners stopped Metro to keep out minorities, that’s just the sort of thing Georgetowners would do”, goes the reasoning. This probably explains why the legend persists, but there’s a bit more to the story of where the legend came from in the first place.

No Contemporaneous Mentions

GM researched the archives of the Washington Post and the Washington Star, looking for contemporaneous mentions of local opposition to a Metro stop in Georgetown. Throughout the period of the planning of Metro (i.e. the 1960’s through to the systems opening in 1976) GM could not find one example.

Early mentions of the absence of a Metro stop in Georgetown reflect the truth, namely that it just was either too difficult or not a high enough priority. In an August 23, 1977 article, the Washington Star answered some frequently asked questions about the still relatively new system. One was about Georgetown:

Later in 1978, the absence of a Georgetown station is described more as a quirk than a conspiracy. The article in the Washington Star, describes a theater troupe from New York traveling around Metro to promote the new night service:

(It’s possible that there is discussion of resident opposition in the archives of the Northwest Current or the Georgetowner, both of which were published at the time, but GM did not have an opportunity to search those archives.) Continue reading →

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The story of how a man who tried to kill Napoleon lived out his days in Georgetown.
• Lots of Georgetowners have weekend homes out in the countryside, but do any have them in the suburbs?

Rock Creek